


A Thousand Miles

by Yngvildr the Voracious (Yngvildr_the_Voracious)



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: F/M, MeiCree, Travels, lots of walking, meicree week 2017
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-16
Updated: 2017-05-16
Packaged: 2018-11-01 14:59:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10924230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yngvildr_the_Voracious/pseuds/Yngvildr%20the%20Voracious
Summary: She's commuting in the Wasteland.He has a little store along the road.





	A Thousand Miles

Her feet ached, but it was nothing compared to the pain in her knees. She wished she hadn’t drank all the water earlier. She had been severely dehydrated and hadn’t paid attention to how few she had left. She realized that now that she needed the precious fluid she had already consumed. 

When finally a building started to form on the horizon, its reflection upon the sand unmistakable, she didn’t feel relieved, but she knew she could find at least water. 

The building in itself was your regular wasteland store. It had a weary sign advertising shade and fresh water (which would be tepid at best) and even entertainment in the shape of a single music note. Mei-Ling smiled. It had been a while since she heard music. Her phone’s batteries had died a while ago and she’d rather keep Snowball in standby, plugged to her photo voltaic power bank. Just in case.  

Such store only broke the monotonous yellow of the cracked desert when you dared venture inside. Warm water was also better than none at all. 

The inside of the building was just as dreary as the outside, but at least it was a shielding against the long expanse of arid land. Inside, there were a few tables and doors as well as what looked like a bar in the back while the front was all rickety benches and scratched tables. 

She sat on one bench, taking the time to breath an air less charged in sand, less burning, it was in fact quite cool to her nose and mouth, so much that she removed her breathing mask and took several deep breaths, the gulps delightful. 

A noise behind her startled her. It seemed that on the immediate left of the door, she had missed the piano and the pianist. 

He was tall and wearing a flannel shirt and an apron. His skin was dark, clearly not only a product of working under the sun and he wore a prosthetic left arm and a hat. 

He asked her how he could be of help, she immediately asked for water. It was way cooler than she expected, almost as if it had been refrigerated. Her parched throat was wanton, but she forced herself to sip it, knowing too much what the suddenly clashing temperatures would do to her body. Once hydrated, she paid and left the building. It was still a long way _home_. 

\---

The second time she stopped there, the owner of the establishment had been in the middle of a jaunty tune. The kind you only heard in old school western movies and stopped whenever the bad guy entered the saloon. 

He stopped when she entered and asked the same questions. She drank the water, she paid, she left. 

\---

The seventh time, she asked about room and board. She had mistaken her pack with that of one of the Junkers helping her in her work and thus, had nowhere near enough nutrient paste. The last leg of the journey, sometimes fraught with bandits, would be too dangerous to do alone and distracted by an empty stomach. 

The man talked about the price. It is fair. The beds are bug free in all manners of speaking. The dinner is cold tomato soup, not quite a gazpacho, and breakfast is toasts and butter with hot tea. _To help deal with the desert’s sun_  he said before she leaves, the sky still purple from the dawn. 

\---

The nth time, she couldn’t remember the number, she is not the lone traveler anymore. They do not take the room, but they pay for the soup, eat it and go away. For a second, she glances at the man in his flannel shirt, his hat on his head hiding their downcast eyes. They’re washing the dishes and she’s just waiting, feigning reading. 

She liked it when she was the only customer here. The music is good, the food and water nice and the silence is pleasant. The silence is a problem as well. She travels back to _base_ before dawn even turns the sky this odd shade of green that remind her of northern lights she loved so much at her previous job. She had to leave. Before she makes a fool of herself.

\---

The next time she comes, he doesn’t stop playing as she enters. When he serves her her customary pitcher of water, there is a wide smile on his face, one that enticed her, one that made her want to engage in small talk. But the silence is pleasant. The music even more once he goes back to the piano and starts playing again. 

She smiles during dinner when he keeps playing and she reluctantly retreats to her room when the time comes. 

\---

Another time, she decides to push toward _home_. She even has enough water to not make the usual stop. When she comes back two days later, she is startled to see the absence of sign on the building. In fact the whole structure looks like it took quite the beating. Her heart beating fast, she pushed the door. The music stopped and the unmistakable click of a gun being cocked greeted her. She froze. The sigh of relief made her relax. 

He wasn’t wearing his hat and he wore no flannel shirt either, sporting a huge bandage instead, stained red. When he sat up to get her water, as silently as ever, she followed him to the tiny room that seemed to serve as both storage and kitchen. It had been ransacked, but he still offered her a small glass of water and what seemed to be meat jerky in a chicken stock soup. 

As she was finally falling asleep, she heard a huge commotion. Rising up from her bed, she opened the door to see the man on the floor next to the piano, his breath laboured, his bandage further stained and dirty. 

She looked at the piano and the door. She helped him move the instrument and when he retrieved a first aid kit and revealed the huge gash on his chest, the stitching torn open, she helped him in the gruesome task of sewing it back closed. He insisted on bandaging it himself and, despite how much she wanted to keep touching him, she let him have his pride. 

Again, she fled quite quickly after a sleepless night. It was especially embarrassing to have to wait for the man to move the piano back at it’s place on the wall. 

\---

The first time he spoke to her unbidden, his voice was shy. 

“May I ask where you’re traveling to and fro like that?”

His accent was not Australian. In fact, he had nothing in common with any of the locals, now that she thought of it. 

“Work and... Well, it’s a temporary home.” she said. “I’m an environmentalist, I’m studying the affect of the Omnium on local weather patterns...”

“Think we’ll finally have that nuclear winter they promised in the books?” he chuckled. 

She laughed. She tried to stop laughing, but she couldn’t. It was too good a joke. 

They mostly spoke of her work. One night as they stayed up late, he brought up a bottle of something stronger than water and she took the offered glass, thanking him. She went to sleep and her dreams were full of his smiles and his biceps and his thighs.

\---

Her mission was finished. She had all the data, she only needed to write her paper and get out of this wasteland. She traveled to the small building in the desert one more time though. 

When she came in, she couldn’t help but feel chilled to the bone. He offered her a drink that night as well. 

“My name is Mei.” she told him. 

“Jesse.” he answered with a tip of his hat. 

He knocked on her door that night. The kiss he gave her shook her to her core and when she left at dawn, she felt both better and worse for carrying both the memory and his name close to her heart. 

\---

He was no stranger to deserts and canyons and plateaus and though it was the first time he crossed a sweltering jungle for a girl, he could remember a mission back in the day that had nearly killed him. It was mostly the wildlife’s fault. _They started it_ , he had told Reyes.

He had missed this almost as much as he had missed her, he realized as he neared his goal. 

_Damn, i hope I don’t come out as that creepy guy who can’t forget that one night..._

But what a night. And what a woman. Well, he assumed. His search had led to folks referring to her as she. Whatever the pronouns, he could not care less.

When he found her, he could ask her more. Maybe refrain from knocking on her door right away. It had been a beautiful goodbye, full of tender caresses, intimate breaths shared and awkward bumping of noses and limbs, but he had shared with her other kind of moments. Musical moments. 

He hoped to play for her again. 

When he reached the facility hidden in the jungle, he saw many people. A query led him to small prefab that seemed to be a common room. Folks were working, he was told. Mei as well. 

He didn’t mind the wait, after all the travel was long and arduous, the jungle hardly a forgiving place. 

He thought of her again, traveling every morning and twice a day, every day, through the Australian wasteland on foot. He couldn’t give her less of himself, considering she was already presented with a guy who was missing a left arm and with way more scars than someone she actually deserved should have. 

Well, she seemed to like his rugged looks. He clung to this thought, nervous. All that walk would have been for nothing, but at least he would be able to let go of Mei. The lady climatologist. 

Her eyes shone when she saw him. They shone with surprise first and then, it seemed unshed tears. He wanted to sigh in relief. 

“Howdy.” he said, tipping his hat. 

“Hiya.” she greeted back with an awkward wave. 

Both took a step forward but ended up sitting together on the sturdy benches of the facility’s common room. They spoke softly, cheeks reddened, eyes glistening. At some point, Mei mentioned a piano in the bar in the city, but it was quite a couple of miles away and his own _home_  was waiting for him. Time to start his own commute back, as a base full of scientists could not house him. 

“Jesse!”  Mei called as he had started the long walk back. 

He turned back around, taking in her silhouette and wishing he could touch her once again and feel the smoothness of her skin and the roundness of her within his arms along with her voice, her voice crying out his name. 

“I’ll... See you tomorrow.” she said. Repeated, more like. 

He tipped his hat and winked. 

\---

She followed him to his _home_ the next time. A _requisitioned_ hunting lodge. His plan couldn’t afford corpses, so he pretended he had been ambushed as he hiked through their turf when he brought the poachers to the local lawful justice. 

Mei listened to the story with rapt attention. they spoke again and it was soft. He told her everything, hid nothing. Abuelo and Shiwoyé. Deadlock and Overwatch, only calling Blackwatch a special division. Desertion and Vigilantism. He would not lie to her intentionnally, not when she was fighting for this world. He almost expected her to run and never come back. Instead, she smiled. 

“You fight to make this world better. It’s nice.” she told him. 

There was a kiss and nothing more this time. They had time for this. 

\---

The travel to the piano-bar was made together. It could have been easier and quicker, since she could use her base’s transport, but they went on foot. 

“You like walking.” he remarked. 

“Yes. Well, the Wasteland almost cured me of that.” she answered.

The paths were relatively clear, the roads well traveled by scientists and the help hired to assist with supplies. 

“In fact... I just dislike driving. I feel like I’m not traveling in a vehicle. I could miss something, anything.” she explained. “Plants, rocks, insects, animals... Company...”

Jesse McCree stopped in his tracks and looked at Mei-Ling Zhou. He took a deep breath. In his experience spouting I love yous in the middle of the jungle only brought two things, embarrassment and shuriken in your thigh. 

She felt it, though, he could tell as he settled on the piano, effortlessly playing her favourite. _Hey Jude._

It felt good to play for her where it was safe, where he wouldn’t need to suddenly block the door with the piano, risking his only valuable piece of furniture.   
On, at the fork leading to their respective temporary homes, she took his hand and held it tight, engaging on the path leading to the lodge. 

The kiss she gave him shook him to his core and in a tangle of limbs, she whispered endearments in Mandarin and in English to his ear, her lips magical. He couldn’t believe he had this clever woman towering over him. Everything she demanded with her caresses and her commands, he gave, gladly. 

In the morning, she was still there and he tightened his embrace over her. 

Well, in bed in a hunting lodge didn’t count as middle of the jungle. 

“I love you Mei.” he whispered. 

“I love you, Jesse.” she whispered back. 

His heart leapt, but this time not from the shock of receiving a shuriken dangerously close to his crotch. He kissed the top of her head, breathing the scent of her hair. 

“This is not the end of the road, right?” Mei asked, a frown marring her features. 

“I’ll walk a thousand miles and more, with you, darling.” Jesse answered.


End file.
